


Lacking Rhyme and Missing Reason

by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-07 01:34:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1880010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Retired FBI agent Bobby's house is a safe one, a halfway point for witnesses. Sam and Dean bring him someone to keep safe. Someone he hadn't thought he'd meet again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lacking Rhyme and Missing Reason

“It won’t be for long,” Sam murmured, his usually crisp suit wilting in the humidity. He had dark circles under his eyes and a tremor in his left hand. 

“You should stay the night,” Bobby leaned up against the door frame as if he couldn’t be bothered to stand up straight. “Get a full night’s sleep before your back on the road.” 

“Can you convince Dean?” Sam glanced back at where his brother leaned into the backseat of the Impala. “He’s driving us both into the ground on this one.” 

“Yeah, let me at him.” 

More like Dean came to him and if anything, he looked worse than Sam. 

“We should get on the road,” Dean rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Anyway, you’re doing us enough of a favor.” 

“Isn’t a favor,” Bobby said sternly. “What kind of safe house do you think I’m running that I’d pick and choose who stays?” 

“Still.” 

“Son, I will shoot you in the foot if you don’t go upstairs and at least pretend to sleep a few hours. You look like shit.” 

“Oh,” Dean laughed, a weak chuff a thing. “Okay.” 

“You know where the linens are. I ain’t a housekeeper. Now get.” 

Bobby counted Dean’s footsteps on the stairs, then the lighter tread of Sam following. It would be Sam to stretch out the fresh sheets and find them towels. If he was thinking straight, he’d do up the other room too. Make it ready for their witness. 

The witness who even now stood in the study doorway, an inky black smear against the dusty wood floors. Bobby sat down behind his desk and waited. 

“Robert,” Crowley sounded just the same. The years hadn’t washed away the crisp pride of his accent or the whiskey smugness that lingered beneath it. “I assumed you were dead.” 

“You know what they say about assumptions,” Bobby watched him, studied as Crowley took a step inside the room taking in the layout. 

“You’ve become a hermit instead.” 

“I’ve got the world in here,” Bobby shrugged. “Never did have much use for people.” 

“No, I don’t suppose you did,” Crowley smiled, a twitch of a thing, there and gone again. He turned to inspect the books, giving Bobby the sight of his back, one hand circling the wrist of the other. 

After a few minutes of consideration, Crowley slid out a volume and took it to the fainting couch Bobby had shoved up under the picture window rather than pitching to the curb. It was ridiculous with it’s patchy red velvet resting on scarred wood floors, but it had been his mother’s. Crowley sprawled over it, dress shoes left neatly beside it. When he seemed settled, Bobby turned his attention back to his own research. 

In a time that felt farther away than the moon, this hadn’t been unusual for them. Sam and Dean knew there was history, but Bobby doubted they had any idea how deep it ran. They would never guess that once upon a different time, two young men had broken bread together and studied the same dusty books. 

They didn’t need to know. It had been a long time ago, before their paths had forked one from another. 

Crowley still hummed when he got deep into a book. Bobby had nearly forgotten that low rumble of a sound. Bobby rubbed his fingers along the corner of one page and tried not to get thrust backward in time. He’d never much liked looking backward. 

Luckily that was when the dog padded in. Bobby wasn’t entirely sure it was a dog at first. It looked more like a fanged pony or confused bear. Before he could raise up his gun, the thing lumbered to Crowley’s side, nosed at his neck and then collapsed with a doggy sigh beside the couch. 

“This hotel doesn’t do dogs,” Bobby grumbled. 

“She’s a guard dog. Aren’t you, sweetheart?” 

The dog raised her giant head and looked sleepily at Crowley. She gave his dangling hand a desultory lick before rolling onto her side. 

“You’re not supposed to take anything with you into WitPro.” 

“She’s a medical necessity,” Crowley trailed a finger along the dog’s ribs. “Vital to my health.” 

“You just bitched and loopholed them until they couldn’t say no, didn’t they?” 

“Actually, she ran alongside the car until Moose started feeling guilty,” Crowley turned a page. “Satisfying.” 

It didn’t take much of a leap to figure out who played the part of Moose in this little drama. 

“That make you Boris or Natasha?” 

“Neither,” Crowley rolled his eyes. “I’m too competent for all that.” 

“So competent that you’re hiding in my house.” 

“That isn’t a question of doing a job well,” Crowley’s grip on the book tightened, “That was a miscalculation of the odds.” 

Bobby left it there. His research swam in front of him, so he gave it up as a bad job. There was dinner to sort out. The boys would probably sleep until they smelled food, zombie walk down for a massive meal and then return to their beds. It was a pattern that Bobby had gotten distressingly used to. 

The kitchen was only a dozen steps away. Bobby forewent his cane and limped across the void between one chair and another. He was aware of Crowley’s stare boring into his back, but the injury was old news by now and Bobby had learned how to shunt aside the over attention that came with it. There were probably more scars on his pride than on his leg by now. 

He hadn’t allowed too much of the accessibility bullshit into his house. Instead, he’d salvaged and repaired an old office chair and jacked it up to it’s full height. He cooked rolling from one surface to the other and he could push himself over to the phone in a half-second. That it still rang just as much as it had when his business cards were a lot more impressive helped him hold the patchy remnants of his ego together. 

The dog announced her massive presence with the quiet clack of claws on the linoleum. She sat peacefully beside him as Bobby chopped vegetables and dug through the cabinets for a box of pasta that should still be there. When he started to brown the chopped meat, she put her head in his lap and looked up with wet eyes. 

“No,” he said firmly. “This is people food.” 

She sighed, the heave of her breath like a south wind. He ignored her. She sat back on her haunches, eyes glued to the cooking meat. 

“You tell no one,” he ordered and spooned out a good chunk of meat onto a wooden spoon. She lapped it up with her stubby tail wagging. “Good girl.” 

Apparently he’d won her devotion as she stayed glued to his side all the way through dinner with the zombie twins and followed him out onto the porch. They looked out over the barren lawn together, her head on his feet. 

Crowley stayed on the sofa. Bobby wasn’t entirely sure that he was even awake, so he just left him there. The stairs were a dicey proposition, but Bobby decided to risk it, preferring not to sleep at his desk with Crowley only a few feet away. To his surprise, the dog slid seamlessly under his hand and let him use her as a second banister. 

“We’ll feed you right tomorrow. Bet Crowley stuffs you with fancy ass food.” 

He peeked into the guest room with it’s tiny twin beds. Dean and Sam were jammed into the same bed just like they used to do as little kids. Sam was curled up tight and Dean had a protective arm thrown over him. They hadn’t bothered peeling off their clothes or getting under the covers. They’d probably been sitting together, talking something over and passed out all over each other. 

“Idjits,” Bobby threw a quilt over them before heading into his room. The dog evaluated the bed speculatively. “No way.” 

She was curled up at the foot before he could struggled out of his pants and proved to be an immovable object. Bobby gave up after she growled at him, a deep bass of a thing that vibrated the bed frame. He fell into a restless sleep. It would have been easier with a glass of scotch to ease the way, but he and booze weren’t nearly as close as they’d once been. 

He dreamed of a flickering fireplace and high-backed armchair. By the time he struggled free of sheets, dreams and dogs, he could hear the boys downstairs. Dean was making eggs, a monstrous scrambled pile. Crowley wasn’t there, but the water pipes clanged suggestively. 

“We’ve got to hit the road,” Dean said firmly when their plates were clean. “I got all of his stuff into the room. You sure you’re good?” 

“Ask me again,” Bobby dared him with flint in his eyes. 

“Yeah, I know,” Dean smiled back, unrepentant, briefly the kid Bobby remembered before time, family and Quantico had pounded it out of him. 

“They’re going to try to move this fast, but...” Sam trailed off. 

“I promise not to kill him,” Bobby shrugged. “He’ll be there for your trial. You worry about everything else. All right?” 

“Sure,” Sam finished his orange juice like it had offended him. 

They left in a series of backslaps, insults and a cloud of dust. Bobby watched from the porch. He heard Crowley before he saw him, the creak of the porch under unfamiliar feet. 

“There’s breakfast for you if you want it. Plate is in the oven,” Bobby ran a hand over the dog’s soft ears. “I’m going in to town, get some supplies for this one and you. Got any preferences?” 

“None you could afford to give,” Crowley said quietly and every hair on the back of Bobby’s neck stood up. “She eats a mix of kibble and wet food. The brand doesn’t matter, but get a lot.” 

Driving was a tricky business, but Bobby loved cars and he knew their insides well. A little trial and error had moved the brake and gas to the steering wheel and the clutch to his uninjured side. He made do with the rest. In town, his history and limp bought more respect than he might’ve seen otherwise with his unshaven face and ratty clothes. He’d even learned to stop snapping at the watery eyed boy who always carried the grocery bags to the car. Instead, he offered over a few dollars and the boy took them with a bright, guileless smile. 

“You have a good day, Mr. Singer!” The boy chirped. 

“You too,” Bobby dredged up a smile. He stopped by the police station with two cups of coffee and a cranberry muffin. 

“Heard you had visitors?” Jody said around a mouthful of crumbs. 

“Yeah, you know how it is.” 

She did know though they’d never had the official conversation. A misunderstanding had forced his hand and she had federal connections. It had been a relief actually when it came out. She stopped treating his guests like suspects and her nightly drivebys became reassuring instead of heart stopping. 

“I’ve got a case that could use your eyes,” she shoved a manila folder in his direction. “What do you think?” 

He read through her cramped notes and drank the rest of his coffee. They talked about kleptomania and he advised a trip to county to see if that would put the fear of consequences in the kid with side dose of therapy. 

“You take care of yourself,” she said sharply when he finally stood. 

“I’m working on it.” 

The dog was waiting for him when he got home. She nosed around the trunk, sniffing out the groceries and letting out a hopeful whine. 

“Course I’m gonna feed you. Might turn cannibal otherwise.” 

Crowley was nowhere to be seen. Bobby put the dog food in an old mixing bowl and backed away fast after setting it on the floor. The phone rang. 

He was deep in conversation with an agent in Belize when Crowley resurfaced. Somewhere along the line, he’d ditched his suit jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He still looked desperately out of place in the kitchen. 

Bobby watched him assess the groceries and begin making something complicated. The voice on the phone nagged at him and Bobby returned his attention to where it belonged. Mostly. It was hard to ignore the tempo of Crowley’s knife through a tomato or the thrum of his cologne in the air. It stirred up ancient temples in the ruins that were best left undisturbed. 

“Here,” Crowley said carelessly and put a plate at Bobby’s elbow, before taking his own back into the study. 

He almost forgot to eat entirely, but his stomach grumbled at the wrong moment and the sandwich was still there, so he crammed it in his mouth. There’s some kind of flavored mayo in it that tasted amazing and he had to work at not groaning into the phone. He ate it between detailed instructions and finally got off the phone a half hour later with a full belly and a sweaty ear. 

When he finally returned to the study, he found it colonized. The dog had stretched out on the fainting couch, taking up more space than Crowley had while her master pulled up a chair to Bobby’s desk. Not Bobby’s side of the desk which was nearly courteous of him. There was a sleek laptop balanced on the edge of the desk, surrounded by paperwork. Crowley looked deep in it, a highlighter tripping between the fingers of one hand and a book unfolded in his lap. 

The dog and Crowley looked up in unison as Bobby sank into his chair and then both away again in mirrored disinterest. It was nearly funny, but Bobby didn’t feel like laughing. He had his own trail to follow. 

The shadows started to crawl across the floor and hours passed with their mirrored slow typing and rapid page turning. The shadows crawled across the floor, pooling at Crowley’s feet. It was the dog that roused them, jumping up with a start to bark at some wayward nocturnal creature. Bobby flinched, but he didn’t bother grabbing for the gun. The dog stopped almost as soon as she’d started, jumping off the couch entirely to sit expectantly at Crowley’s side. 

“Guess that means dinner,” Bobby rubbed at his eyes.   
“I believe we’re past that,” Crowley glanced at a watch that probably cost more than the house they sat in. “A midnight snack, perhaps.” 

“Mac and cheese?” 

He half-expected Crowley to protest the offering, but instead, he just followed Bobby into the kitchen and began to prepare the dog’s meal.

“What’s this beast’s name, anyway?” Bobby asked when the silence went right on thickening. 

“Madge. Don’t ask, she came with it.” 

“I never thought of you as the puppy adopter type.” 

“I was looking after her as a favor to someone. They never came back for her,” Crowley set down the food dish, then leaned against the counter, a frown ticking the corners of his mouth. “I kept meaning to get rid of her, but by the time I got around to it, she saved my life. Seemed ungrateful to boot her out after that.” 

“Had a dog around here for years,” Bobby offered in return. “Pitbull mix. I had to put him down a year and a half ago. He was good company.” 

“The silent often are.” 

Bobby wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a hint or not. He lapsed back into quiet anyway. They ate together, forks stabbing listlessly into their plates. A thousand questions climbed up Bobby’s throat, only to fall raw and acidic back into his stomach, unasked. 

“M’gonna head to bed,” he muttered instead and dumped the dirty dishes in the sink. He climbed the steps, Madge under his hand again. She didn’t seem interested in leaving his side, even as Bobby made out Crowley’s tread on the steps and the opening of the guest room door. 

In the morning, the sink was empty as if by magic. In another life, they had once done the dishes together with the window open to the hum of cicadas. They had stood too close together, elbows brushing and the world had seemed very simple. 

By the time Crowley roused himself, Bobby had banished sentimental thought in favor of a strong cup of coffee and the mystery novel he’d been trying to read for weeks. Madge was cracking her way through a pile of dry food. Crowley poured his own coffee and sat down across the table. He didn’t pick up anything to read or eat. Instead, he just looked directly at Bobby as if he were studying something on a museum wall. 

So Bobby looked back. He studied the lines of Crowley’s face, found the places that age had softened and wrinkled, the thinning borders of his hair. The lips had thinned and there were new bags under his eyes. Yet time could have been harsher. He was still handsome in that rough roguish way. 

“I’m probably going to die,” Crowley said, his voice so quiet that it barely disrupted the silence. 

“My job is to see that you don’t.” 

“And while I have all the faith in the world in you, your rural comforts are only a waypoint to the inevitable,” Crowley sat back in his chair. “Lucifer isn’t one to cross.” 

“Are you backing out?” 

“No,” Crowley smiled, shifting the lines of his face into a familiar expression. “Your boys did their job, planted the seeds in the fertile ground. Were I to go home now, I’d meet the wrong end of a gun before I turned my key in the door. But, if I do this...well. I buy a little time. Definitely becomes probably. Becomes...possibility.” 

“You’ve got to have a safe house somewhere. The boys’ll help you get there if you do what you promised.” 

“Will they?” Crowley’s smile didn’t falter. “How kind of them.” 

“Want me to cry you a damn river? All the shit you’ve slung, you’re damn lucky to have gotten what you got.” 

“I suppose I wouldn’t have done well in prison. Too pretty.” 

“You’d run the place in less than week.” 

“Flatterer,” Crowley’s smile shifted, warmed into one more genuine. “I always assumed that we’d meet again. Thought it’d be a bit more dramatic.” 

“More dramatic than you hiding out from the world’s foremost crime boss?” 

“Mm,” the chair tipped back. “Guns at noon. Long speeches.” 

“You’re about twenty years too late for that kind of shenanigan.” 

“You aren’t even angry with me, are you?” Crowley searched Bobby’s face again as if he could unearth some long buried truth. 

“What’s to be angry about? You’re a grown man, who made his choices. Same here.” 

“I betrayed you.” 

“Did you?” Bobby rubbed the back of his neck. “Seems to me I did you a few wrong turns first.” 

“She was lovely though. That I always understood.” 

Karen had been lovely. Sweet and open armed. Bobby had gone willingly into marriage with a passion, only realizing what he’d burned up behind him when Crowley was already gone with the smoke. 

“Sometimes I still expect her here,” the admission came unbidden. Turn a corner and I’m surprised that she isn’t there. You’d think that would wear off.” 

“I don’t think I ever loved someone like that,” Crowley glanced around as if Bobby might actually summon her up. 

“Maybe you could’ve,” Bobby looked down at his hands, surprised to find them shaking a little. “Given the chance.” 

“Doubtful,” Crowley’s grin faded away entirely into something inscrutable and ancient. 

Madge set her head on the table, eyeing their plates speculatively. There was no time between her deciding on her course of action and the huge paws landing on the table, flipping it neatly over. That effectively killed whatever conversation might’ve followed. The phone rang as they righted the table and the morning was off to a start with a bang. 

They settled back into the previous day’s positions before long, the quiet tucked around their shoulders like a heavy blanket. Bobby propped open the back door and listened to Madge wend her way in and out, her claws clicking against the floor. 

That night, Bobby lay awake in his bed and he could hear the faint creak of Crowley pacing the floor downstairs. Madge propped her head on Bobby’s thigh, her eyes open and bright in the dark. Eventually the stairs creaked and the footsteps approached Bobby’s door. They stopped there, lingering. 

For a terrifying, irrational instant, Bobby was frozen with a kind of terror he hadn’t experienced since he was a small child. It was standing on a very high cliff, certain that someone was behind you to push you into the abyss. It was that first yawn of potential mortality. 

It vanished nearly as quickly as it had come, the primal fear of what lurked in the dark banished by too many years of weary certainty of what exactly was out there and how little being scared helped. 

“You might as well come in,” he pushed himself up on his elbows. Madge humphed in irritation at the movement. 

The door opened, letting in the barest sliver of moonlight before closing again. In gloom, Bobby could make out the shape of Crowley as he moved across the floor, one hand extended outward to grope past the furniture. In one streamlined movement, Madge stretched and oozed onto the floor to curl up on the rug, leaving a space for Crowley to sit beside Bobby, his body heat leaching through the blankets. 

“You’re not the boy that I remember.” Crowley’s hand landed on Bobby’s ankle through the blankets, intimate and distant as the moon all at once. 

“You either,” Bobby grimaced. “Guess time does that.” 

Crowley didn’t speak, only moved over Bobby’s legs and settled beside him on the bed. Over the covers and dressed, they had years and layers between them. This was the bed that Bobby had shared with Karen, the nest they had feathered together. But she had been gone from it a long time. He didn’t search for her perfume on the pillows anymore, no longer kept neatly to his side to leave space for her missing body. 

“I was already involved in the family when I met you,” it’s not quite a confession that crawled over the space between them. “Had been since I was a lad.” 

“I know,” Bobby sighed. “I knew then too. I thought...well.” 

That he could save him somehow. By dint of just existing beside him, Bobby pull him from the morally murky depths and set him on the path to righteousness. The clarity of youth, stained by the years, seemed foolish to him now. Money and power had always been Crowley’s masters and probably always would be. He worked, not off Bobby’s rigid moral compass, but through enlightened self-interest. 

Bobby let his head sink back onto the pillow. Crowley reached out, fingers encircling Bobby’s wrist as heavy as a handcuff. They fell asleep like that, their breath slowing to a shared rhythm. 

He woke stiff and aching, apparently his body had declined to move in the night and Crowley had only shifted closer, an arm thrown loose over Bobby’s chest, his face mashed into Bobby’s shoulder. Maybe once Bobby could have untangled himself silently, but these days getting out of bed was hard enough without the added challenge of stealth. . 

“Get up,” he shook out his arm. Crowley stirred. “Off.” 

“Mmfff,” Crowly opined, picking up the edge of Bobby’s blanket and rolling over with it, wrapping himself up and leaving Bobby exposed to the early chill. 

“Ass,” Bobby groused. Crowley ignored him, breath whistling through his nose. 

Madge was waiting politely at her food bowl, a line of muddy tracks describing her early morning roamings outside. His life had been casually uprooted, he realized as he poured her some kibble. He’d kept many people safe in these walls before, but none of them had needled in and rearranged things so thoroughly. He’d blame the dog, but Madge was really the least of it. 

“Let’s go for a drive,” Crowley pronounced when he finally came down the stairs. He had lost the rest of his affectations in deference to the growing heat of the day, pared down to black t-shirt and blacker jeans. It made him look nearly soft. 

“Where?”

“Anywhere.” 

They took the truck, Crowley seemingly content to be in the passenger seat with the window open and the sunlight streaking in. For lack of any other destination, Bobby drove out to the lake where he’d taught Dean to fish, a lifetime ago. The dock was still there, a little rotted through, but willing to hold up their weight. 

Two rickety folding chairs perched at the edge and all they needed were rods and beers to look like any other weekend fisherman. Bobby wasn’t certain what day it was, come to think of it. Calendar dates had a way of blurring together in retirement, the week losing it’s proper shape. 

“Your injury is spinal.” 

Bobby had been expecting...something. Some question or passing comment. Had been braced for it with his usual bank of scathing responses still developing interest. He hadn’t thought it would come up while he was dozing in the sun by the water like an old man. 

“S’what they tell me,” Bobby agreed. 

“Bullet?” 

“Knife.” 

“Ouch.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Did you see the light at the end of the tunnel?” 

“No. Didn’t get a chance to lose consciousness. Rode the mad and adrenaline all the way to the hospital. Took a double dose of anesthesia to put me under. ” 

“Ha, almost wished I’d seen that.” 

“Wouldn’t’ve minded the company.” 

Neither of them bothered pointing out that it could just as easily been Crowley holding the knife, if he’d been the sort to get his hands dirty. What was the point? 

“Was it worth it?” 

Bobby stared across the water, thought about Sam’s face twisting into horror as the blade sank in, Dean’s scream. Thought about the beast of a man that would’ve killed them all and done more beside if Bobby hadn’t stabbed the bastard through his own gut. 

Thought about the long recovery, the aches and pains that would probably plague him for the rest of his life, the way doing nearly everything had three extra steps now and giving up the job that had given his life meaning in the hard years after Karen’s death. 

He thought about killing the man, who wanted to hurt his boys. 

“Yeah. Guess it was.” 

“Martyr,” Crowley sniffed, but with a warmth and fondness that kept Bobby’s temper at bay. 

They stayed long enough that shadows slid over the lake and chased them back to the truck. After an intense conversation in which Bobby pointed out repeatedly that Crowley was meant to be lying low, they still wound up eating out at a reasonably nice Italian restaurant. The waitress side-eyed Bobby’s battered baseball cap. 

“Heathen,” Crowley tsked, reaching out and removing it. Before Bobby could slap at his hands, Crowley had settled it on his own head. It looked bizarre there, migrated to foreign territory. “There, now I’m properly disguised, yes?” 

“Oh yeah, that’ll deter ‘em,” Bobby rolled his eyes. Crowley grinned in the shadow under the hat, a little too toothy and knowing. 

“It works for Brad Pitt.” 

“Uh huh.” 

“I met Angelina once.” 

“She as good looking in person?” 

“It’s always better in person, darling,” Crowley rolled the endearment over his tongue, letting it sink into Bobby’s skin as they took their seats. 

“I dunno. Met Manson once. That was worse.” 

“Marilyn?” 

“Charles.” 

“He’s a psychotic,” Crowley clicked his tongue against his teeth. “What were you doing with the likes of him?” 

The case was a long settled one, so Bobby told Crowley the details as they waded through breadsticks, tomato sauce and white wine. In return, Crowley described an evening on an unnamed coast, watching for the light of a single boat carrying in precious cargo, while killing time talking to a man he later realized was Hunter S. Thompson. 

“He was quieter than you’d think,” the wine glass rotated slowly between Crowley’s fingers, the liquid inside climbing upwards and sinking back down leaving behind a pale tide line. “Maybe because he was sober or the wrong kind of stoned.” 

“What’d you talk about?” 

“Funny that...the power of prayer.” 

“What’d he think about it?” 

“Nothing good,” Crowley tipped the glass to his lips, “but nothing quotable. More’s the pity.” 

Madge waited for them on the porch when they got back, jogging to Crowley’s side and giving him a disapproving sniff, her stiff posture relaxing. Bobby tried not to feel guilty for not taking her with them. 

“There’s a love,” bending down, Crowley took her jowly face between his hands, planting a kiss on her muzzle. 

It was bizarrely tender after days of near negligence. Madge licked Crowley’s cheek, canting his eyebrow in the wrong direction. The cap still sat on Crowley’s face, masking his expression at this turn of affection. 

“Coffee?” Bobby asked, shifting towards the house. 

“Please.” 

They drank it on the porch, watching a cloud of fireflies signal desperation and want across the weeds. A breeze blew in, shaking the leaves and rattling through loose metal in the scrap yard. It was the music of Bobby’s life, the cadence only slightly interrupted by Crowley’s deep even breaths. 

There was an inevitability to the night, even as Bobby washed out their mugs and Crowley tidied papers in the study. As if magnetized, they came back together and climbed the stairs single file to Bobby’s room. Madge eyed them and choose to sleep in front of Bobby’s door, her eyes cracked ever so slightly open. 

“Do you...” Bobby began, but lost the rest of the words. 

Crowley placed the baseball cap on Bobby’s nightstand, then drew his t-shirt up and over his head. Gone was the leanness of a young man, in it’s place something stronger and softer. Hesitantly, Bobby shrugged off his shirt, showing off the minefield of scars. Without a word, Crowley reached out and settled his hand over the worst of it, the still angry red mark where the blade had gone in. Crowley’s hand covered it entirely, the pressure of his palm an odd tingle against numbed tissue. 

The last time they had stood together in a room with a bed, shirtless, they had both still smoked. A cigarette haze had enveloped them, blurring the lines between them. Bobby had tucked the memory of that languid afternoon away, pulling it out in the dead of night when thinking about Karen was just too painful. He’d remembered the rough-gentle way Crowley had, holding on tenderly, but too hard all at once. He remembered the gravel pull of their skin sticking together with sweat and the steady trickle of Crowley’s whispers in his ear.

It wasn’t anything like the last time. Their bodies had become strangers. They spent more time kissing than anything else, waking up parts of themselves that had dozed too long. Accommodating new bulk around injured flesh meant blunt words and shoves that killed any impulsive heat that might have risen. 

It wasn’t anything like the last time. It was real, instead of memory preserved in amber. Afterwards, Crowley made a throne from the pillows, reclining like a lord. Bobby stretched out beside him, a line from shoulder to thigh still touching. 

“I would have made you miserable,” Crowley finger walked down Bobby’s spine, idly mapping vertebrae. “Gloriously miserable.” 

“Daydream about torturing me, did you?” 

“If torture includes you sitting at home drinking yourself slowly to death...” 

“Managed that just fine on my own.” 

“Mm.” 

There weren’t any declarations. They’d long since passed the expiration date for passionate decrees. Instead, they pulled the blankets up around their ears and grumbled over sleep space. Bobby found himself being violently spooned, the heat of Crowley’s body easing the aches he’d gathered from their earlier tussles. 

When Bobby woke, there was a tray at his bedside table bedecked with a eggs and bacon. There was a small vase too, filled not with a flower, but a thin tight roll of paper. Bobby unraveled it, bacon between his lips. 

_Hello darling,_

_Gone to meet your boys. Madge has elected to stay with you, traitorous beast. But I suppose I could understand her reasoning. I’d much rather to have stayed myself._

_Yours eternally (believe it or not),_

_C_

Bobby finished chewing his bacon and gave the eggs to Madge, who’s tail drooped mournfully even as she ate. 

“I hear yah,” Bobby heaved a sigh. He allowed himself ten minutes of self-pity, then got out of bed and went back to his life. 

The boys had actually texted, he later discovered. Sometime in the wee hours while he and Crowley were sleeping. They’d gotten Crowley’s testimony moved up after some discussion with a judge. When Bobby shot back a reply about saying hello next time, Sam wearily called. 

“We wanted to. But it’s all happening now.” 

“You two aren’t doing anything stupid, are you?” 

“Probably,” the sigh that came over the phone sounded ancient and weathered. “But I promise it’s necessary.” 

“You come home when you’re done, you here?” Bobby demanded, ignoring the lump in his throat. “Both of you. Use some of that hard earned vacation time for once.” 

“Okay, Bobby. Okay.” 

The phones rang, food was made and consumed, the porch bore witness to a few extra sleepless nights for a time and then didn’t anymore. Madge claimed a swath at the foot of the bed and he woke with one foot asleep more often than not, pinned under her heavy head. He worked, got a new annoying twinge that forced him back into PT and met Rufus four hours away in a diner to talk shop. 

The newspapers occasionally delivered up snippets about the trial which Bobby read with studied detachment. Mostly they were about delays, in fighting among the lawyers and once, a piece of evidence was suspected to have been stolen only to resurface in the coat room of the courthouse. He filed all the clippings away and turned to the weather. 

The summer flared out in late August, bringing in an early autumnal chill. Madge chased drying leaves across the lot, her enormous jaw snapping wildly. Jody fetched him one weekend and they drove down to a craft beer festival, eating too much junk food and sharing a cruddy motel room that stank of cigars. 

She got a little weepy on the last day and he remembered, too late, why she must’ve wanted to flee town on that day. While she composed herself in the bathroom, he got himself to the closest store and came back with Dr. Pepper like her son loved and a bag of York Peppermints that her husband had eaten all the time. They shared them out and talked about the missing. 

“I don’t feel it so much day to day anymore,” she had melted chocolate on her lips. “It...reminds me of when I was first pregnant in an inverse sort of way. I knew I was, felt sick half the time, but my life still went on and I would just...sort of forget and then something would happen and I’d remember it all over again. I feel just like that sometimes.” 

“Like a healed up broken bone,” Bobby agreed. 

“You’re probably the best friend I’ve got,” she confessed to him when they finally turned off the lights. The aisle between their beds was filled with moonlight.. She looked soft in her pajamas and her hair in a loose ponytail. “Ain’t that sad?” 

“I dunno,” Bobby grinned at her, tossing a balled up wrapper at her face. “I figure you could do worse.” 

“Maybe,” she laughed and settled in. “You have good dreams, Bobby Singer.” 

The first tinge of frost brought his boys home. Dean came back first, alone, suckerpunched and too tired to explain. Bobby got him settled on the couch and pretended to make dinner, keeping an ear out for the nose whistle that meant Dean had fallen hard asleep. He slept for thirty-six hours, barely turning over and Bobby came by to check his pulse more than once. Madge kept an agitated vigil, fetching Bobby the second Dean started to stir. 

“I don’t know if he’s coming back,” was the first thing Dean said eyes still half-shut. “He road escort right up to the prison gates and then...disappeared.” 

“Come on, get up,” Bobby poked him. “We’ll sort it out.” 

They didn’t sort it out. Dean hung around for three days in a daze, picking at food, drinking Bobby’s beer and playing desultory games of fetch with Madge. On the fourth day, a battered Honda rattled up the drive and released Sam. 

“Sorry,” he choked out when Dean collided into him with the force of a bulldozer, wrapping him up in a hard hug. “I got lost.” 

Bobby made them stay as long as he could, keeping a constant eye and ear on them. They were battered and bruised, but ultimately he determined, unbroken. When they stopped jumping at the screen door slamming shut and started making rough jokes again, he deemed them healed enough. 

“We’re gonna...” Sam started. 

“Yeah,” Bobby pulled him into a one armed hug. “Be good to each other.” 

They were gone an hour later. 

Twenty minutes after that, a lean sleek dark car purred into the driveway and wound it’s way around the house and into the garage. Madge leaped to her feet, barking out an excited whine. She paced until Bobby let her loose, watching her bound across the yard. He could’ve followed her, but it was damn long walk there and back. Instead he settled himself down in a chair in the kitchen, coffee mug held between both hands. 

Eventually, a shadow in the door blocked out the afternoon light. Bobby leaned back in his chair as Crowley pushed into the kitchen. He was fully suited again, a crisp black shirt and a red tie, subtle pinstripes in the jacket and pants. 

“Well, you’re not dead,” Bobby sipped his coffee. 

“Apparently not,” Crowley had a suitcase in one hand. He set it down inside the door, ignoring Madge’s curious nose. 

“This isn’t a hotel.”

“Good because you don’t want to hear the review that I’d leave on Expedia.” 

The expensive loafers made no sound as Crowley moved across the kitchen. He pulled over another chair, pressing his knees into Bobby’s thigh. He looked at Bobby the way he had over breakfast all those months ago. Accessing, looking for changes. 

“I thought you’d be in Switzerland by now,” Bobby said when the stare stretched on. 

“Iceland, perhaps,” Crowley shrugged. “Switzerland doesn’t capture my joie de vive.” 

“And Sioux Falls does?” 

“A detour,” Crowley put one hand over Bobby’s knee. “I need a safe house, you see. And this is the safest one I know.” 

“Right,” Bobby snorted, but he laid his hand over Crowley’s. “I mean who’d come looking for you here?” 

The strange thing was, no one ever did. Crowley’s detour took them up to the bedroom, through a week of near fevered activity and then...he just stayed. He danced with Jody at the town’s Valentine’s Day celebration, he rode shotgun out to see Rufus for Easter and made perfect steaks for a suspicious set of Winchester on the Fourth of July. 

When it came around to Thanksgiving, Bobby admitted to a few things. He pushed some paperwork and clout around. Left the documents on the side of the desk that would now always be Crowley’s. 

“What’s this?” Crowley brought the papers to him, brow wrinkled. Bobby put his book down on the nightstand. 

“What’s it look like?” 

“It looks suspiciously like you want me to kill you.” 

“Yeah, that’s what I wanted you to take from that,” Bobby rolled his eyes. “Thought you were supposed to be smart.” 

“You don’t want the Bobbsey Twins to have these?”   
“Yeah, s’why I went through the trouble of creating a fake identity for you and getting it on all those papers. Because I want to give Dean a laugh.” 

“I’m not exactly the person you want to hold your life in their hands.” 

“You sleep next to me every night, make half my food and force painkillers on me. I think if you were gonna end my life prematurely, you’ve been procrastinating.” 

“Hmmm,” Crowley sat down beside him, kicking off his shoes before swinging fully onto the bed. He had a pen in one hand and Bobby wondered how close he’d come to signing before he’d decided to ask about it first. 

Bobby was used to Crowley’s thoroughness, wasn’t surprised when he read through each document with a care that bordered on obsessive. Eventually, the pen began to move forming spiked letters along dotted lines. 

“There. In case of an emergency, yours truly can pull the plug or force you to live out the rest of your days as a vegetable. Happy?” 

“Ecstatic.” 

Duplicates showed up on Bobby’s desk days later, twice as thick with legalese and the names reverse. Bobby signed them without looking. And that was that. 

“In sickness and in health,” Crowley declared as he slid into a mailer. 

They kissed over a shared glass of whiskey, contracts neatly sealed between them.


End file.
